BOOKS AND BEHAVIOUR.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9703, 15 April 1897, Page 6

BOOKS AND BEHAVIOUR.

The practice of reading has of late years been a little over-rated. We honestly believe that in the old days, when every woman did not know-how to read, she did more genuine serviceable work than now. The supply of cheap and nasty fiction is to-day so enormous that it is impossible to keep it out of a girl's way. and, indeed, the more you try to do so, the more eager she is to get it, and the appetite for it once acquired grows very rapidly. • Average girls may, roaghly speaking, be divided into two classes—the dreamy, idle, sentimental girl, who spends all her leisure time in reading fiction, and the purposeful, energetic, helpful girl, who despise, ideals, and delights in the healthy realities of life. With both the probable destiny is marriage ; but whilst the one dreams about it, the other unconsciously works for it. Probably the practical girl thinks very little about marriage beforehand ; but when, in the course of nature it comes,.'she is quite ready for it, and accepting it, like he- previous duties, with frank simplicity, she ends in making an admirable wife. The sentimental girl on the other hand, dreams . idly of an ideal lover, of romantic dark eyes, drooping moustache, and white ,be r ringed vhahds. Marriage is," to,her.'Ttn"'airy sentiment, and her disillusion is bitter, both for her and her -ho-band; -

As a matter of fact marriage is a very serious occupation—-the most serious a woman can undertake—and shouh", like other professions, be prefaced by a Suitable and thorough training. A man nervier thinks of marrying, until he' has mastered some profession, and learned to make, if he does not already possess, an income. This probably takes him'years, to do, but the income which he has learned so painfully to earn a sentimental girl will undertake,,.*jaite casually and without any previous preparation, to spend. As a natural consequence, disaster and misery speedily follow j and the love which she thought so much of vanished, as it came, in a dream. '*.'/■

The practical-housewifely girl, on the other hand, who knows to a penny what so maeh money will give her, who can, at a pinch, take her cook's or her housemaid's place, and prepare a dinner or ;tuyn out a room with equal celerity and skill, will be a treasure to auy man; and.the simple reason ol.it all is that, instead of reading and dreaming about lovers and. marriage, she has all along been carefully acquainting herself with a woman's natural duties. Shejifts kept her heart fresh and free .to .love 'n!"_rally when /the time comes, whilst the girl who thinks and reads of little elsejbut lofe is like the gourmand who dreams so much about his dinner that he is disappointed with it when it comes, and ends his day in a fit of indigestion and spleen. The test of a book is the effect that it has on onr behaviour. Thereare some books that stir one like, a war trumpet. -The blood runs quicker through the:veins, and a girl lays it down that she may more quickly express the healthful activity .with which it inspires her. There/are books like Words worth's verse and Jefferies' prose that call one outinto the open to make acquaintance anew with .Nature_\;simplicity and ,beauty; Stevenson's essays broaden and deepen our minds by their charitable and kindly views of human nature; and Carlyle, rouses to greater sincerity and industry. Of wise and healthful fiqtion there is abundance. A girl will only learn wisdom and good sense from such as -Mrs Oliphant. With so much excellent literature-•#* hand, surely girls might very well avoid all low-class fiction. They may take it as an excellent rale that all books that'give them a distaste for the daily duties and realities of. life are unhealthy, and that it is better io take life as they find it and make ihe best of it than to dream about ah ideal sentimental existence, which would only nauseate them if they ever p.ttr.ir._i to it. .'.'''■*..'-